Rediscovering the real Barack Obama

Mar. 11, 2015
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Written by

DeWayne Wickham

DeWayne Wickham

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ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE -- As this airborne White House made its way to Selma, Alabama, to deliver President Obama to the jubilee celebration of a civil rights event that, more than any other, propelled him into the Oval Office, I made a surprising discovery: the real Barack Obama.

Six years into his presidency, after many attempts to dissect -- and diagnose -- him, I finally found him. And, ironically, he's actually the leader he told me he'd be the first time we met on the presidential campaign trail.

Back then, in July 2007, he was the junior senator from Illinois who brashly considered himself presidential timber, and I was a veteran columnist who had logged multiple tours of duty on the front lines of America's political wars. Obama saw himself as a black politician who could bridge America's racial divide. I wanted him to be a black superhero whose White House campaign would give America its comeuppance.

During a one-on-one interview following an urban policy speech that summer day, I asked Obama whether he could lead a new war on poverty, given the historic resistance of taxpayers to fund these kind of programs.

"You can't solve the problem of poverty if you're not speaking to the larger anxieties that working people and middle-class families feel as well," he told me. "If we don't provide them some relief, then their attitude is 'I can't help somebody else.' That's how this agenda has to be framed. ... The more we can say we're going to fight on behalf of all working Americans and we're going to do extra stuff for those who need the most help, that's an argument we can win."

Frankly, that wasn't what I wanted to hear, but it helped him win two presidential elections.

Three years into his first term, with the nation in an economic down spin and the black unemployment rate at 15.5 percent, I blasted President Obama for not making a more targeted effort to end the economic misery that racked black communities across this country. Last month, the black unemployment rate was down to 10.4 percent.

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"I think our policies have been sound; I think our vision has been right," Obama said during a round table talk with five journalists in Air Force One's conference room. "I think we have made enormous progress, and I can show demonstrably how the lives not only of African Americans, but working and middle-class people across the board, are improved as the result of my presidency."

Worries misplaced

On balance, I think he's right, including his vision for leading this nation that he shared with me in 2007. My worries about him not caring enough about blacks who twice voted for him in great numbers have been misplaced.

I wanted the first black president to be like Putney Swope, a 1969 Blaxploitation film character who stumbles into control of a major corporation and turned it into a hotbed for black activism. Obama saw a different America.

He's not the president of just black Americans, Obama reminded us en route to a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the civil rights protest that sparked passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

"I am the president of all people, (but) if I pass legislation that is boosting the income tax credit for low-income workers, I know by definition that African Americans will be disproportionately helped by that.

"The notion that I would describe that as a bill targeting" blacks won't help it win passage -- and would ignore all the whites and Hispanics "who are also struggling," he said. His job, Obama said, as Air Force One was about to touch down in Alabama, has been "to build (an interracial) coalition of like-minded people who care about the same issues" he cares about.

That, frankly, is the same world view Barack Obama revealed to me eight years ago -- and shared with the thousands of people who showed up in Selma for his historic address.